It's not just the normal customers, though. A predicted shortage caused a run on chips by people looking for a profit. I've been working on a PCB design for months in which I specifically picked a chip to design around that was newish, in current production, and plentiful at all the major suppliers. I got my first test run done, made a few changes, ordered a second run, which I intended to populate myself, and there were exactly 4 chips left at a single major supplier. Yet, Octopart suddenly lists dozens of new suppliers I've never heard of.